Wednesday, December 30, 2009

It’s time to reflect. To assess. To weigh up. Like a woman with one tit bigger than the other trying to squeeze them both into a cleverly padded bra ironed by a fastidious Libran. Because you get them sometimes, those uneven body parts, especially if you’re a man of a certain age. And that’s what we’re all doing now. Juggling, juggling, juggling the mammaries of our hopes, fears and wishes into a workable factotum of resolution as we stand on the arbitrary threshold of another 52-week long onslaught of nonsense.*

* If you think that’s ridiculous, I nearly went with balls, but they don’t make bras for uneven scrotums and that would have ruled out the fastidious Libran gag.

This time last year, the future looked so, so different. Way more doom and gloom, as I recall. And no Susan Boyle to cheer us on our way with her sublimely disturbing warblings. Just Obama and Jacko. Sigh

But now I come galloping to the end (on a donkey! I demand a donkey!), I find myself weeks away from completing my novel (yes, I know it’s been weeks for months on end, but unless I contract some debilitating plague-2-Go, I reckon it’s the final furlong this time) — oh, and a freelance writing project to die for.

Striding into the darkness is all well and good but this year I’m minded to toss a few fireballs about the place to clear the obfuscating mist. That’s what’s needed, I think, to straighten out fate’s cruel brassiere. I’m no great believer in Yin and Yang — their range of instant noodles tastes like cack — but in a swings-and-roundabouts Universe, what goes around comes around, they say. And I certainly feel like I’m coming round at the moment...

Monday, December 21, 2009

Call me original to the point of being an inspirational conceptual genius, but in the run-up to Christmas, I’d planned a few posts based on my favourite seasonal songs, complete with commentary, biographical notes and no small smattering of sentimentality.

And today, Jona Lewie — my second favourite Christmas song of all time!!!

But you’re not having the bloody Wombles, you despicable fiend! You’d only rip the fur from their Beresford-inspired little bodies and poke out their beady eyes with your Mutant Quirk of Downunder Evolution spawned claws as you feigned a pelvic wiggle to their Batt-inspired melodies.

I study the reports. Seems every living organism with prehensile flaps and a larynx is belting out the chorus in unison, over and over and over.

“If it gets any louder,” says the ship’s computer, “the Cosmos as we know it will end.”

The technician eyes the hologram console with suspicion. “How can you be so sure?”

“Pack it in, the pair of you,” I say. “We don’t have time for a jealous spurned android / philandering computer love tryst retribution sub-plot. Pass me the greasy stick-on moustache! I’m going into the Vortex!”

*

Night falls on the furthest reach of the Universe. Another millimetre and it would have dropped off the edge.

I stand in my anti-plasma rhinestone denims, peer into the Vortex. Of all the misspelled celestial phenomena, the Vortex is the most mysterious. It monitors every unvoiced thought in the Cosmos and spins whole galaxies from the almost-whispers. But now it’s got hold of Slim Whitman. Scary music. Goosebumps. Sopping wet pants.

What was it my science officer said?

Never cast a clout till the flagellatrix’s second atrium turns a pale amber-blue and your bioscanner reads precisely 58.752% Methane.

No. That was over lunch last weekend. Before he kissed me.

“He said,” comes a bizarre yodel, “creep up on the imprisoned Whitman and perform a moustache meld, thereby sealing his mouth tight shut.”

I turn to see the slick-haired crooner emerge from the Vortex like a voodoo doll on a Brylcreemed water flume. “That’s exactly it. Thanks.”

I think about leaping through the air and wrestling him to the ground before he can open his mouth, but there’s a good twenty feet between us, and these rhinestones are tight enough to rupture me. But then — a brainwave.

“Not so fast, you foul pseudo cowpoke,” I cry — and fling my stick-on moustache at the inhaling villain’s mealy lips like a tomahawk. It lands — SPLAT — below the smooth fiend’s own neatly clipped whiskers and silences him, binds him tight. That’s when I leap. And rupture myself. And yelp into the Vortex.

*

I wake up in the Medi-Lab.

“You did it,” says the Doc. “You saved us.”

Something about his voice sounds familiar, like it was me talking and he was some kind of ventriloquist’s dummy.

“Who you callin’ a dummy?” he grunts. Oooops. Forgot he was a telepath.

The Vortex took a shine to me, it seems. And now the whole Cosmos speaks with my voice. Annoying, but better than Armageddon I suppose.

The crew throws a party in my honour, with sausages on sticks, paper hats and endless games of Pass The Parsec. Then the psi-beam pulses me back to my cell.

Tuesday, December 15, 2009

The moment I laid eyes on her, I thought, optic nerves are a bit slack this morning (and later had to take to wearing spectacles to stop them falling out again).

That day, I heard the piiiing of romance, smelled the scent of love, tasted the burgers of passion.

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!

Whirl 4 Susan 4 Ever

When I took her home, we made mad passionate shelving displays, with her perched high up on a strip of IKEA mock-mahogany and me spread akimbo from the top of a B&Q stepladder.

And the travels we went on together!

The bathroom cabinet! The bookcase in the living room! Even (thanks to an impressive lump of Blu-Tak) the extractor fan over the cooker!

But then Girly of Whirly moved in. Demanded Susan be locked in a box.

My heart was torn. As was my head. Both halves of me (if you believe in mind-body dualism) equally rent asunder (actually, it was mind-body dualism).

“A compromise...?” I ventured.

“Very well,” said Girly of Whirly, “I will permit Susan to be released from her confinement for limited periods on high days on holidays, but if she should so much as pop up spontaneously on top of the fridge or in my underwear drawer, I shall grate the very flesh from your body with my fingernails, laughing with sadistic glee as I so do.”

That told me.

But love springs eternal, doesn’t it? Summers infinite. Autumns forever. Winters like mankind’s undying enthusiasm for singing Elvis hits at karaoke parties. Needless to say, I’ve been near-terminally grated on many occasions, and forced to rescue Susan from the dustbin more times than I’ve had hot dinners — plus salads.

Susan, my Susan, I shall not forsake you. This is the song I sing.

And now the Christmas season is upon us once more, it is time once again for you to take your rightful place on the mantelpiece, resplendent in the glory of your 90s Woolworths tinsel....

Saturday, December 12, 2009

The N.H.C. box stands poised, along with the tree, the lights, the candles, the tinsel, the baubles, and all the other festive tosh, ready to be strewn about the house in a Gok Wan meets Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen kind of a way.

On December 22nd, I shall be hosting a Joyous Arbre De Noel Festival, so if you would like your tree to feature in this seasonal spectacular — a seasonal spectacular for which there will be a Mystery Prize* come 2010 — then email your photos in advance of that date to whirlochre@gmail.com, along with any blurbs/jokes/stories/comments you think might be FUN.* of a crap crap crap crap crap nature

Monday, December 7, 2009

As I stood this morning, shaving in front of the mirror, and beheld my foam-splattered face, I found myself unable to stem a hearty Ho Ho Ho. Seconds later, I had a pink pillowcase draped over my head like a hood. Pink — almost red, right?

Sunday, December 6, 2009

A week from now, I shall be running my fingers over Noddy Holder’s Cock.

This is the name I gave some time ago to the huge cardboard box of Christmas decorations tucked away in my attic. It’s written on the side in black marker pen, and I’ve even stuck some tinsel to the lid.

For what could be more festive than the mighty bird that graces said bizarrely hirsute 70s pop icon’s table every Christmas?

The only problem with naming my Crimble Dec repository thus is that I’m apt to be misinterpreted.

Picture the scene when I moved to Whirl Towers from my previous abode, Le Singe Du Jour.

A removal van full of burly men arrives — a trio of butt cracks to shame the dark void at infinity’s edge.

“I’ll give you a hand,” I say.

They chortle, in an openly dismissive neither use nor bloody ornament kind of a way — then fling the entire contents of the kitchen over their backs while I struggle with a wickerwork basket of manly scented shaving foam.

And so it goes.

Later, we arrive at Whirl Towers. I’ve helped the guys with a fridge magnet, a carrier bag of clothes pegs and some loo roll. I feel great.

The biggest of the guys thrusts a chest of drawers in my face and says, “where do you want this?”

“Bedroom,” I reply.

The hairiest of the guys stuffs a fridge-freezer in my chops and says, “where do you want this?”

“Corner of the kitchen,” I reply.

Then the boss guy — the one who looks like a perfect genetic fusion of Oliver Hardy and Freddie Mercury circa the Bohemian Rhapsody era — sticks a big cardboard box smack between my eyeballs and says, “where do you want this?”

It’s the Noddy Holder’s Cock box. The one covered in tinsel. That says NODDY HOLDER’S COCK.

A frisson of amusement plays my facial muscles into hard-to-conceal twitch. I feign a sneeze. A fly. A degenerative nervous condition.“It’s OK,” I reply — reassuringly, like a nurse taking the pulse of someone just about to die — “I’ll take that.”

I can’t think the guy’s won a single Yuletide game of Pass The Parcel since.

Friday, December 4, 2009

I never like to start too early, and this year, that means being a little late. Oh, and before you ask “up what?” I should point out that in the run-up to the festive season, Abysswinksback is going to behave like a family blog. So — no pine cone twixt bum cheeks innuendo, if you please.

The great thing about decorating the tree is that everyone can get involved — especially Geoff, who (once again) will be gaffer-taped to a length of bamboo and hoist to the very top with her legs splayed out like a star. I have gold paint, tinsel, and a 100 Watt light bulb, so she’s going to look spectacular.

What’s great also is the annual rummage through the bauble tin for delights from Christmases past. Each year, one or two extra knick knacks get added, and we have pretty much everything going, from the old glass 50s globes that survived being shattered by the buttocks of great-grandparents, to the weird nylon 70s jobs that laddered like a stripper’s tights. But inside this box of wonders, there are a couple of items sadly absent. When I was still in shorts (at 7 — I’m no weirdo), we had a couple of birdees made of felt — a tit and a Robin, as I recall. They attached to the branches of the tree with wire and kept us all company with their silent tweeting right through till 12th night, by which time they’d be dangling upside down, looking thoroughly ridiculous.

Thursday, December 3, 2009

Son of Whirl is off cheese and ham at the moment, so his school packouts are having to be made up from the only other item on his list: salmon. And since we neither live near a leaping brook, nor include amongst our sticks of furniture a fully functional salmonery, it’s down to the stalwart hunter-gatherer-checkout girls of Tesco to provide us with huge tins of the stuff, caught by none other than Mr John West (or on occasion, Tess Cowzone) — and down to me to peel the soggy grey mush of dead flesh from said tinned salmon’s pondwater-soaked bodies at six in the morning.

Clearly, fate passed me over when it came to having both eyes sucked out by a trio of Mr Universes and a suped-up vacuum cleaner.

Maybe I’ll get luckier next time when I come back as a Yorkshire Terrier...

Tuesday, December 1, 2009

Whoa! Hold it right there, pal. I dispute that one. Given the evidence so far, I appreciate that you may not know how to USE a slide rule, but quite clearly, in choosing this mathematical convenience tool as an example of your supposed lack of knowledge, you demonstrate that you do, in fact, know what said trig ‘n’ algebra friendly implement is FOR. It’s FOR something you don’t understand. Had you said, for example, pop-up toaster I’d have been much more sympathetic to your heartfelt pleading. As it is, I get the distinct impression that you’re not as dumb as you’re trying to make out. Indeed, I believe you may be trying to cheat your way into my pants. So, in a moment, when you proclaim all that nonsense about a wonderful world, I shall spurn your faux romantic advances on the grounds that in addition to being spectacularly thick, you are a lying, cheating, duplicitous scoundrel who should be locked in a dungeon and forced to live on bread and gruel till 2072.